Change Your Life by Becoming an Owner Operator in the Trucking Industry
Appreciate the power of having a good attitude in the trucking industry.
Episode 337: Having the right people in your business is very important for success. The ‘right people’ must have a combination of experience and expertise, but more importantly, must have a great attitude and the personality traits needed to be successful in their role.
Speaking of a great attitude, our interview with successful trucker and YouTuber with the handle Trucking with Tay, gave us a glimpse into what optimism and hard work can accomplish. Tay has not only achieved financial success but has also inspired others to do the same as an owner operator. From tripling his income to helping a young follower purchase a house and truck, Tay’s story is a testament to the opportunities that can be had in the trucking industry.
Links
Sponsors of this Episode
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Transcript of Episode
Jamie Irvine:
You are listening to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine, and this is the place where we have conversations that empower heavy-duty people. Welcome to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine. In this episode, we are going to talk about how joining the trucking industry can radically change your life.
We’re going to talk about some of the challenges you may have to overcome and why it’s worth it, and we’re going to discuss what it means to be heavy-duty. Let’s get started. At the Heavy Duty Consulting Corporation, we work with our clients on a variety of different things.
Everything from market investigations, strategic business planning, people and organization and many other things. But one of the most common issues our clients have is people and organization. Let’s face it, getting the right people sitting in the right seats is a challenging thing that seems to be getting harder every single year.
What do I mean by the right people? Well, what I mean by that is somebody who has the right combination of personality traits for the position that they’re going to fill and has relevant experience to do the job. Now, in addition to that, we want to layer in a component of attitude. They also have to have the right attitude to fit into the culture of your company. Now, to fill open positions, you are likely going to have to recruit people from outside of the industry.
There just isn’t that many heavy-duty people with a lot of relevant experience available, and that number is dwindling year over year with so many of the older, more experienced ones retiring and people also leaving the industry. When you are recruiting, I recommend that you create a job model that outlines the requirements that you’re looking for to find an ideal candidate.
Now, in that job model, what we want to do is we want to lay out the ideal personality characteristics that a person who would be optimally good at that job would have. Then we want to compare the people that we are recruiting to that job model and find somebody who has a personality that really matches the position that they’re going to fill on your behalf. Now, this doesn’t mean we don’t look at relevant education experience and skills.
That is still a important component of recruiting the right person, but when we do this using a tool like the Psychometric Assessment Tool TRAITS that HDC uses with all of their clients, you can predictably meet someone who you’ve never met before and you can predictably see what kind of person they are and whether or not they are a match for the job model that you’ve created for that position.
This is a really important piece to recruiting and I think it’s something that a lot of heavy-duty companies really struggle with. So you end up hiring someone who maybe has the right resume, but they’re not a good fit on the profile side. We see this in sales, we see this on the parts counter in management positions. We see it throughout the company.
Now here’s the thing, you can find somebody who may not have all of the relevant education experience and skills, but who has an excellent, a strong alignment to the job model from a personality perspective, and you can teach them what they need to know to become really proficient at the job.
When you find somebody who aligns from a personality perspective, what you end up hearing is you hear people say things like, “I love my job”, and they tend to stick around a lot longer.
Why? Because of that alignment. This is such an important piece to recruiting the right kinds of people, and when you have that alignment, what you also see is that these types of people are more productive and if they are missing a piece of the puzzle on the education experience and skills side of the equation.
If you give them the training, they rapidly are able to absorb that training and apply it and very quickly they’re usually able to get up to speed to where you want them to be to do the job correctly. Now, education, experience and skills are things that can be taught.
Personality, attitude, cognitive ability. These things are not taught, so for example, let’s talk about personality. Your personality stems from the genetic codes you receive from your parents and your grandparents and also the environment you grew up in as a child.
Both of those things developed your personality. By the time you became an adult, that personality, let’s say profile if you will, has been locked in. You are who you are, and really over time that personality does not change a great deal as you age. It’s kind of locked in for life.
So while you can teach people the education, experience and skill side of the equation, you can’t teach people to, for example, be more assertive than they actually are or be more social than they actually are or be more detail oriented than they actually are.
You might be able to help them get to higher levels of performance based on where they are, but you’re not going to radically change who they are as a person. Okay, so when you think about all of that, that other component we mentioned earlier, attitude comes to play, and I think this is such a X factor when it comes to finding the right people.
It’s so important to find someone with the right attitude. This is also something I don’t think you can teach. Now we’re going to talk about that a little bit more later on in the episode in our segment. That’s Not Heavy Duty and how attitude plays a role in all of this.
But before that, I want to introduce you to our guest in today’s episode because this individual did not start out in trucking, has joined our ranks and has an incredible attitude and a great story. I’m going to introduce you to our guest in just a moment. We’re going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors and then we’ll get right to our interview. We’ll be right back.
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We’re back from the break and before the break, I was talking about how important it is to find people with a combination of education, experience, skills, and the right personality trait and the right attitude.
My guest today is someone who has an incredible story and has an excellent attitude and we’re so lucky to have him in the trucking industry. My guest today is an owner operator. He goes by Trucking with Tay.
Now Trucking with Tay is a dynamic content creator who shares his experiences and insights from the road offering a behind the scenes look into the life of a trucker. His content is designed to motivate and educate viewers of the trucking industry and people who are interested in learning more about the trucking industry. Tay, welcome to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. So glad to have you here.
Trucking with Tay:
Let’s do it. Let’s do it. Let’s do it. How you doing, man?
Jamie Irvine:
I told people in the intro that you are an individual with an awesome attitude. There’s evidence of that right there. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation to get to know you a little better. First of all, Tay, can you just go into a little bit more detail about kind of what’s the big idea behind what you’re working on right now, the project that you’re working on right now?
Trucking with Tay:
Man, honestly, I really just want to just grow organically, show people from the bottom and just come from the bottom and just move your way up, not just far as your lifestyle, just as a regular trucker. You could just start honestly, I started at a company.
I started incentives to make more money and I just pushed it. YouTube was the foundation for that and once I just kept going, I said, dude, I like this, and the guys around me far as the YouTube community, they liked the motivational part.
I thought it was just a natural thing, but it’s like they gravitated to it. So I’m just like, dude, we got to take this and run with it, and that’s what it was. Man, honestly just started from somewhere and just growing organically and you don’t have to do too much, just work it, but don’t go the hand.
That’s just work. Just work and hopefully you know what I’m saying by the finish line, you can bring other people up with you. That’s my goal. If I could change just a few people life, that’d be awesome for me.
Jamie Irvine:
Yeah, it’s one of the reasons that we work so hard to encourage people to be heavy-duty, to consider the trucking industry as a viable place for a career and a way of life. So I am definitely in line with you on that. Let’s get into your story though. Tell me a little bit about your educational background and your early career before you got into the trucking industry.
Trucking with Tay:
Man, a lot of guys don’t know this, but I actually went to college. I went to college and I got a four year degree in business management and I always wanted to be able to put people in position. You get what I’m saying?
And also being able, I seen this video online and a guy worked at this company for 30 years, 30 years. It was a trucking company. They went under, his pension and everything gone. You get what I’m saying? Everything is gone. And also he got fired as well. You get what I’m saying?
I’m like, how can somebody work for someone and then with no warning or nothing just to get fired like that and going to college and I thought I wanted to be a manager or something, but it’s like overall I wanted to have my own thing. You get what I’m saying? And I got, honestly, I ain’t told too many people this. Okay, you listening?
Jamie Irvine:
Okay. I won’t tell too many people either. Just the thousands and thousands that follow the show, everybody.
Trucking with Tay:
Dude, I got fired. I got fired from a job two years ago. I never said this on my YouTube platform or nothing. I got let go from a job two years ago and that feeling it gave me was, it was the beginning of 2022 and that’s when I started my company.
So yeah, man, I just wanted to be able to get put in position. I started with, I graduated college in 2015. I was a salesman at Pepsi and I worked all these hours, dude, I worked so many hours and I’m like, dude, it got to be more to life than this.
And then I started looking to trucking in the little school that it requires and you can make so much money. So I said, dude, let’s do it. Let’s do it. It happened so fast, dude. I’ve been the owner operator longer than I’ve been a company driver. You get what I’m saying? I did company driver for two years, but I’ve been the owner operator for four. Yeah.
Jamie Irvine:
Okay, so I just want to recap that. So you got your full degree in business administration management, you went into a corporate job in sales. You started to get some experience there. You’re looking around and you’re saying to yourself, there’s got to be more to this than this corporate lifestyle.
The trucking industry came on your radar and you spent those two years as a company driver that got your start, and then you made the decision to go into the owner operator side of the business. So you’ve been an owner operator for four years now. How has it gone since becoming an owner operator?
Trucking with Tay:
It’s been good, man. It’s been good, man. I’m going to tell you, it has its ups and downs, dude. It really has its ups and downs, but overall it’s been good. I’m going to tell you the company that I got to let go from man that year and the year before I was printing my own money, man, I was printing my own money. I was loving trucking.
And the thing is, I was so new to it, man. I was so new to it, and a lot of guys, I hear the older truckers, Hey, they think it’s going to be like this forever. And I’m like, literally when I had home time, I was like, dude, I got to get back out there because when an older trucker tell you something, you need to listen. When somebody would experience tell you something, you need to listen.
And I’m like, every time I’m talking about, I promise you, every time I left home, I was making 10,000 bucks, every week. My best week was like a $16,000 week. I had a couple PC days and I had a couple of this and a, but I had a good week, man.
So yeah, man, when older truckers tell you something, you need to listen in. And it was just a great time. During the first two years, I became the own operator, but as my own motor carrier because the last two years I’ve been my own motor carrier and it’s been, and you just got to go with it.
Jamie Irvine:
And I’ll tell you something, Tay, I’ve been working in the heavy-duty parts side of the business since 1998, so I’ve got a few years under my belt and we’ve been through five economic cycles in that time period. And you’re absolutely right, the older ones that have been through it, they know that when it’s good doesn’t last forever, when it’s bad, doesn’t last forever. It is a cycle.
The classic truckload cycle right now, we’ve been in the bottom of it. We’ve been bouncing along the bottom of it for a little while now, and we’re just starting to show signs that we’re coming into the early first stage of another cycle all over again. So as you made that transition from company driver to owner operator to motor carrier, you’re increasing the amount of responsibility that you have.
As a company driver you just got to drive the truck as an owner operator, you have to pay the bills for that truck and then as a motor carrier, small fleet, you’ve got to do things like your own maintenance, things like that. So how do you approach and how have you so quickly adapted and learned what you need to do to keep these trucks on the road and what’s your general philosophy with things like maintenance and parts?
Trucking with Tay:
Save. Dude saving is so important. Let me tell you another thing. My first truck was a fairly new truck. 2020 is when I started my company. I had a 2017 truck and it’s fairly new compared to my 2005 truck. You get what I’m saying? And the 2005 is pre-emissions and EGR and all that good stuff. And my new truck I’m talking about. I barely had to do anything with it them first couple years.
You might have a sensor go out of anything like that, but I barely had to do anything to it. I would tell guys, start with a good truck, man. Don’t try to, as I was coming up, I was like, dude, I could buy this older truck and I put a saw on there and I do this, I do that. Do I’ll save myself so much money, dude, save yourself a headache, okay?
Save yourself a freaking headache, get you a pretty good truck starting off. That’s what you do. Get you a pretty good truck now. Therefore you can save money and the maintenance problems in the downtime you’ll have is little versus an older truck.
In my experience, just as in my experience, it’ll be so much more smaller because the parts on that older truck is old. You get what I’m saying? Versus the newer truck, it’ll take a little bit more time for it to wear down. You get what I’m saying, man? I’m telling you, start off with a good truck and save your money.
Jamie Irvine:
I think you’re right. Depending on who you are and what your financial position is, there’s probably some middle ground there that would be the sweet spot for a truck. So one that maybe you don’t have to go into deep debt to acquire the truck like you do with a brand new truck, but one that isn’t so miled out and God, the longer that truck’s been on the road and the more operators that have driven that truck, who knows the maintenance practices that they were following.
So as vehicles age, if you don’t know the history on that, you can just be buying someone else’s headache and that can be very costly. Engine, transmission, differentials, suspension, electrical issues, all of those things start to come play. So I think you’re right. Start off with a truck that is going to be good for the vocation you’re in that is not too miled out, that has good maintenance record.
And then from there, if you follow a good solid maintenance program, you don’t cheap out on parts and try to find the cheapest part out there. You buy high quality replacement parts, then you have the foundation and the basis to actually make some money.
Trucking with Tay:
Manage your money well. I put my money to stocks. I did, but it was more of a high risk kind of thing, dude. And when you making money, put it into a safe thing, bonds and stocks that’s safe.
And now all of ’em might not be like the risk parts up here, what I was taking, be more down here to the floor so you can, when the hard times come or a big breakdown come or motor or transmission, hey, you could just borrow from yourself and keep going.
Jamie Irvine:
Yeah, and I think that’s important too. When you look at your whole financial situation, you got to treat your business. It’s your business and not your personal bank account. You have to set up your personal finances to take care of yourself.
You got to try to keep those separate, and I like what you’re talking about with lower risk because if you have a long-term viewpoint on many aspects of life, you will do far better than if you are just worried about the next week, the next month, or even the next quarter.
Trucking with Tay:
That’s it, dude. I’m telling you. You hitting it right on. Right on, dude.
Jamie Irvine:
So you do a lot of motivational content. Tell me a little bit more about that, about what kind of really inspired you to do that? What kind of messages are you sending out and when you’re doing the behind the scenes stuff, what are the kinds of things that you are showing people and how do you incorporate that into a motivational message?
Trucking with Tay:
Man, I’m going to tell you, me and my wife talks about this a lot. Honestly, we were just talking about it last night. Our natural instinct is to help, you get what I’m saying. It wasn’t like no money, money, money. It’s just to help people and see them smile, even when you don’t have the most and you see someone else struggling. It’s just like, what can I do to help them? What can I do?
Jamie Irvine:
Can I stop you there for a minute? I just want to ask your opinion on this. We’ve always said if you find somebody who’s trying really hard but coming up short, that’s the person you want to try to help.
Trucking with Tay:
That’s it, dude, I promise you, man, even when you’re not doing the best, it is like, but you seeing someone come up and I’m going to tell you, I’m going to tell you. It’s this young guy. I started my YouTube in 2018. He started following me mid-2018.
I want to say it was mid or before, but it was somewhere in that little sweet spot. When I say this guy, he was on my coat tails. It was so many people coming towards me. I’m like, God, where’s all this coming from? But I was grateful. I was happy.
I was thanking God for it, but it was so many people I didn’t know who was genuine, who was this, who was that? But this guy stuck with me and he had called me. He wasn’t able to call me at first, but he started sending me messages on YouTube, sending me messages on social media, and I started to put him under my wing.
When I say this young guy, listen, and I was telling him the experience I was going through. This young guy was, I’m 31, I want to say he like five or six years younger than me. So around that time I was like 25, 26. He was like 21.
This guy got his first house within two years, I want to say like a $260,000 house until at the age of 22, 23 years old, he was working his butt off. And I’m not going to say all that was due to me because he’d go out there and work six weeks at a time, and I was just so, so happy.
But that little help, that little motivation, I was able to give him Emmanuel, it was just everything for me. It made me feel so good. He got his own truck now, he just bought his new truck, I want to say last year, the end of last year, he got him a house. He don’t have any kids yet, so he’s doing really, really well.
He got, I don’t want to say how much money he got saved up, but he got some money saved up in the bank and he’s doing really well, and I’m telling him right now, save your money, bud. Do not go into the high risk like I did. Save your money and don’t go into all the credit card debt. It’ll be devastating. Just listen to me.
Jamie Irvine:
Yeah, I second that for sure. As you’re telling your story, I know yourself too. I mean, you were able to triple your income. You were able to buy a house. Since I’ve started this podcast in my consulting business, I was able to buy a different house for my family.
The many years that I worked for other companies, I always had stable income. It was really a stabilizing factor in my life, the trucking industry and the people who are part of the industry are such great people, and they always seemed to be someone to step up and help me at just the right time.
So I love the fact that early on in your career, you’re already trying to pass it on to the next generation. I think that’s so important for those people who are critics of joining the trucking industry, and maybe there’s a young person listening right now.
Maybe they want to be a heavy duty parts person. Maybe they want to be a technician, maybe they want to be a driver. And actually Melissa, the Diesel Queen, she’s a technician who’s been on the show. She also bought a house in her early twenties because of being a diesel technician.
So for the critics, and you have this young person listening, and they see the people who are critical of the industry, and then they hear our message and they say, what’s the truth here? What’s the one you want them to remember from our conversation today?
Trucking with Tay:
It changed my life. It changed my life. I was 26 years old when I bought my first half. I got over four acres. I got a 3000 square foot house. It changed my life. I got two trucks. I got equipment. Dude, I got a freaking zero turn.
Dude, growing up, a freaking zero turn was like, dude, you pushed the normal. I grew up with a break on my shoulder and pushing the normal. I got a freaking zero turn, guys. I always say to myself.
Jamie Irvine:
Life is good when you get a zero turn.
Trucking with Tay:
Dude, I got zero turn, dude. Oh, I always told myself, y’all, and listen to me. I promise you, I told myself this when I was a company driver. If I fail, if I fail as a owner operator, I can always go back to being a company driver. You get what I’m saying? If you fail as a truck driver and you working as a factory worker, you can always go back as a factory worker where you’re comfortable, but why not take risks when life is so short?
Life is so precious. I’m telling you, you got nothing to lose. Just save up a little money when you’re doing something like that. Save up a little money to cover your tail. You get what I’m saying?
And going from a Pepsi salesman to a company driver, first year, dude, I made almost six figures the first year. Second year, six figures for sure. Third year, I got, dude, I made over half a million dollars with all my trucking stuff, dude, over half a million dollars. So I did really, really well.
Jamie Irvine:
In your mid-twenties.
Trucking with Tay:
Dude, it was like, hold on. 2021 was how many years ago? Three years ago. Mid to late twenties, I made over half a million dollars.
Trucking. It was amazing. Dude. Dude, take a risk and try it, guys. I’m telling you. I’m telling you, it’s been good.
Jamie Irvine:
You’ve been listening to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine, and we’ve been speaking with Tay, with Trucking. Tay, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. If people want to follow you, they can follow you on Instagram at Trucking with Tay. I’ll put the links in the show notes. Thanks so much for being on the show. It was great to talk to you.
Trucking with Tay:
Awesome. Thank you, man.
Jamie Irvine:
Well, I hope you enjoyed my interview with Tay. I think it’s a great story, and don’t you agree what a great attitude this guy has towards the trucking industry. We’re very happy to have him amongst our ranks here in the trucking industry.
Now it’s time for That’s Not Heavy Duty, and in this edition of That’s Not Heavy Duty. I want to talk about a bad attitude. I’ve heard so many people in the comments of past interviews and posts that we’ve done online really complaining about the trucking industry. They complain about the wages, they complain about the working.
Now, I understand that working the trucking industry is not the easiest job by any means, but trust me, there are far, far harder jobs that actually pay a lot less, and I’ve done some of them like gutter cleaning and rebar and construction and other jobs like that, and the trucking industry is truly a great industry to be a part of.
The people are amazing. The work is really interesting and challenging, and from a lot of people, the pay is substantially better than the alternatives that are available to them. So please, if you’re in the trucking industry, don’t discourage people from joining regardless of your personal opinion.
The reality is we need more people. We need people with a great attitude, having a great attitude, being appreciative, always challenging the status quo and trying to improve. That’s an important piece that cannot be ignored. But all of this together to me, is the heavy-duty way. That’s how we are heavy-duty.
So please have a great attitude about what you do. Really encourage people to join the trucking industry, and if there is a problem that you’re experiencing personally, let’s try to be proactive and address it as opposed to just being reactive or being extremely negative, which I don’t think is warranted because by and large, the trucking industry is a great industry to be a part of.
Well, thank you so much for listening to today’s episode. If you haven’t already, I’d like you to head over to heavydutypartsreport.com and make sure you hit the follow button. Sign up to our weekly email so you never miss out on any content. We only send one email a week, so we’re not going to spam you with anything.
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